Sammy Davis Jr.: The Untold Story of the Great Entertainer

Sammy Davis Jr., the late legendary multi- talented black
singer, dancer, actor and comedian, whose life and career have been profiled on
the currently playing wonderful PBS documentary, “Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Got To Be
Me”, was reportedly once on a golf course with his close friend, the late
iconic comedian Jack Benny, when someone asked him what his golf handicap was.
“Handicap”, he responded, “Talk about handicap. I’m a one- eyed Negro Jew.”

That comment- which he recounted in his auto-biography and
was repeated in countless articles written about him during his life which
began in 1925, and even continued to be told by entertainment writers after his
death in 1990- was not intended to be a
joke. Davis was, in fact, a Negro (a term, of course, that has
since been replaced by the words black man)- Jew with one eye. And his
disability, religion and race had become intertwined through a strange series
of events, some of which are highlighted in the documentary.

Davis, whose mother was a Catholic and whose father was a
Baptist, had back in 1953 developed a close friendship with the comedian and TV
host Eddie Cantor. Cantor, who was Jewish,
had given Davis a mezuzah- a small capsule containing a brief Hebrew blessing
traditionally affixed to door posts in the homes of observant families of the
Jewish faith- as a special gift.

Rather than placing his mezuzah in his own home, however,
Davis wore it around his neck every day, telling friends that he believed it
would provide him with good luck. There was one day, and the only day- November
19th, 1954- that Davis forgot to wear Cantor’s gift. In the late
evening of that life- altering day, as Davis was driving to his Los Angeles
home after performing in an evening show in Las Vegas, he became involved in a horrific
automobile accident, tragically resulting in the loss of his left eye.

The paradoxes surrounding the accident, as Davis later
recalled, soon spawned his desire to study the Jewish religion and learn about
the history of the Jewish people, whom he viewed as experiencing throughout the
centuries prejudice and hatred similar to what black people had also long
endured. So, it could have been almost literally said that upon his formal
conversion to his new religion in early 1960 that Davis had become a true “Negro-
Jew”.

But it was the “Negro” half of Davis rather than the
“Jewish” part that was to make him the victim of intense racial hatred. As could be readily inferred from the
documentary, when Davis in a Jewish ceremony married May Britt, a white,
Swedish- born actress, on November 13, 1960, it was his race not his religion
which stirred the hatred of many Americans against him.

As that wedding day
drew close, Davis received numerous death threats, requiring him to hire round
the clock armed security guards to protect him and Britt. Those death threats were to continue for years
after the couple married. It might seem
hard to believe in today’s America, but at that time, hatred towards inter-
racial couples reflected the biases of many Americans.

A look at the history
of America in the middle of the 20th Century tells the disconcerting
story. On the day Davis and Britt were
married, 23 states still held “anti- miscegenation laws” in their penal codes.
And Davis’ own California had repealed its own hideous laws barring inter-racial
marriage only 12 years earlier. While the United States Supreme Court declared all
such vile laws unconstitutional in 1967, such bigotry did in fact, actually
mirror the sentiments of a wide majority of citizens throughout the nation for
many years. A national poll taken in
1958, for example, found that a mere 4% of Americans approved of marriages
between blacks and whites.

Davis, though, seemed
to be more upset by how his marriage to May received the scorn of then
President- elect John F. Kennedy than he was by the death threats or the
prejudices held by many Americans. As presented
in the documentary, Davis along with his friend the inimitable singer Frank
Sinatra and several other major Hollywood stars of that time had worked on
behalf of JFK during the 1960 presidential campaign, and Davis had been
scheduled to perform at Kennedy’s January 20th, 1961
Inauguration.

However, Kennedy, later said by some historians to be concerned
about the controversy surrounding the then recent Davis- Britt marriage,
withdrew his invitation for the entertainer to perform; worse still, he even
went so far as to disinvite Davis from attending it. It was a hurt and disappointment that several
of Davis’ friends and family members were to later say would remain with him
throughout the rest of his life.

But it did not make Davis lose his sense of love of humanity
or his ability to forgive. Sounds presumptuous? Allow me to describe a long past personal
experience to explain that claim: First fast forward to an August day in mid-
northern NYS about ten years after the JFK incident: While off from college in
the summer of 1970, I worked as a lifeguard in Hotel Brickman, located in the
rural area known as the Catskills. Brickman was but one of of a couple of
dozens of Catskill hotels, which included the Grossinger’s, The Concord and the
Brown’s. Enjoying their heydays in the 1950’s and 1960’s, these hotels, now
defunct, offered their guests, among many other amenities, comedy shows
performed by an impressive list of the best- known entertainers of the time.

If you are under 40
and don’t know who they were, just ask your parents or grandparents to tell you
about Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, Danny Kaye, Shecky
Greene and Jackie Mason. They, and a few dozen other top show people, regularly
performed in many of the Catskill Hotels during that time. Of all that long
list of talents, Sammy Davis Jr. was the top billing. And one of the hotels in which Davis sometimes
performed was Hotel Brickman, a fact I learned one August day during a pleasant
after work discussion with the hotel’s captain of the bell hops.

The man, a tallish,
broad- shouldered, middle aged guy who had worked in the hotel for more than 20
years, was known to have met many of the entertainers who performed at the
hotel during his time there. The “Captain”, who seemed to like to me, said that
he had a personal story to tell about Sammy Davis, which he predicted would
make a great impression on me.

It did, and over the
years my brain has relived it countless times. I have also told it many times to friends, acquaintances
and even students in my graduate English classes. As a result, I believe that (almost) every one
of the words of the tale the captain of the bellhops of the Hotel Brickman told
me on a long gone hot summer early evening remains well stored in my memory
bank. And I can still recall his words as follows:

It was some time in
the summer of 1962 that Davis, who was with his wife May, had come to the hotel
to perform one weekend. After the couple left the limousine that had
transported them to the hotel, their luggage was taken to their suite by one of
the hotel’s bellhops. As I was to later learn, it turned out to be the wrong
guy for the job. He was an ignorant, white racist who while escorting Sammy and
May to their room, made several nasty remarks regarding the difference in the
color of their skins.

Sammy, as you would expect, was outraged. Shortly later, he
found the manager of Brickman to complain about the ugly verbal abuse he
and his wife had just suffered. The racist bellhop was fired that same day. The
story, though, did not end there.

Two summers later Sammy, again accompanied by his wife,
returned to perform at the hotel. While standing in the lobby waiting for their
luggage to be taken to their room, the couple was approached by a young guy, who himself worked as a bell hop at the hotel. Given what had happened two years before, the
guy might have been taking a chance of losing his own job, but yet, he
identified himself as a friend of that racist bellhop who had insulted Sammy
and May two years before.

I, as the bell hop captain assigned to the lobby, witnessed
all this. So I was clearly able to see the look of annoyance on Sammy’s face. May also looked upset. And as you might expect, the friend of the
racist bellhop had enough decency and common sense to begin by telling Sammy
and his wife how disgusted he was by how his then co-worker had spoken to them
the last time they were at the hotel.

However, he then added that his admittedly justifiably fired
pal has a wife and four young children, had been unemployed since his firing
and his house was currently going through foreclosure.

What I then saw and heard I will remember until the day I
die: Sammy asked the guy how much money
the friend whom he had come to plead for would have earned the past two years.
The guy told him 12,000 dollars. Sammy then asked him to write on a piece of
paper his friend’s full name. Sammy then opened his wallet, took out a check and
filled it out. He handed the young bell
hop, the check- made out, I later learned for 12,000 dollars – and told him to
deliver it to his financially struggling buddy.
Sammy then added that he was going to see the owner of the hotel to tell
him to rehire his one- time antagonist. His
final words to the young bellhop who had the courage to come to speak to him
that day was ‘tell your friend to report to work tomorrow. I promise there will
be a job waiting for him.’

To paraphrase the title of a great old song, ‘What the World
needs now is another Sammy Davis Jr.’.

Robert Golomb is a nationally and internationally published
columnist. Mail him at MrBob347@aol.com
and follow him on Twitter@RobertGolomb